Yes, but not for the reason you're thinking.

Recruiters and sales people (guilty!) tend to network exceptionally well, which means by connecting with them, you'd just significantly expanded your 2nd level connections within your own industry.

Winz

I went out of my way to connect with recruiters because it extends my network. Two benefits:

1) It makes me a 2nd level connection to lots of people I probably do care about. 2) It ups my visible number of connections and makes me look important. People see 500+ connections and assume I'm someone important.

I will accept one if the recruiter is targeting me. That means he/she wrote a custom message, read my profile, propose me something...

Each time that I was asked, they were on a frenzy and it looked like they were connecting to as many people as they could

LinkedIn is meant to create networks for recruiters and candidates. Waiting to build your network until you actually need work is like waiting to make your backups until after you had an outage.

As a rule I will accept requests from recruiters unless:

1. They obviously don't know how to do their job properly. For example offers sent out without getting acquainted with my profile or asking me to do their job is a reason for me to drop the recruiter.

2. They can't explain the offer, for example what I would be expected to do, or can't connect me with somebody who can. I understand that recruiters can't have my level of technical knowledge or they would most likely be working as engineers. Nevertheless, they are responsible for communication and if I can't get required information I drop the recruiter altogether.

3. Recruiters who require me to do any work before I can get to know who I would be working for.

4. Recruiters who just outright give me the form to fill in to build their database, including all the information I already included in my CV or Linked In profile.

I am open to new opportunities. If I get a request from someone with a lot of connections, my heuristic is I don't add the someone to my network. I don't think a single person with lots of connections is actually helpful to the information represented in 'my' network.

If a recruiter looks interesting, I try and open a conversation without making them part of my network.

And rules are made to be broken, of course.

It doesn't look odd, the same way it doesn't look odd that you have in friends list bunch of people you have never seen and know nothing about. People just accept anybody as a contact.

Me, I don't accept any recruiter unless I know them in person. I even have it stated clearly in my profile, though most of the recruiters don't even bother reading it.

I used to accept when I was potentially interested in getting new job :-) I even got quite an interesting interview from my LinkedIn network long time ago. Now recruiters contact me for slightly different purposes and mostly it's a waste of time from my perspective.

Some of them will try to connect with you if you have many connections so then they harvest your connections too - I deal with it by making sure nobody can see my connections (you can set this up in privacy section)

Generally no. The thing is the value of that connection is really low, because most recruiters connect with as many candidates as they can indiscriminately. The reason for that is financial: If you're directly connected then it doesn't cost any credits to send an in InMail message.

I'll accept a connection every now and again, and only if we share connections with at least 2 other non-recruiters/technical people.

I try not to overload my connections with recruiters as they don't provide much network feedback value (i.e. they rarely comment or like anything I post).

I don't think it's odd from an employer's point of view. I accept all requests that may offer some value to me in the future.

I used to dedicate some time to replying to the messages that follow but they became a bit overwhelming.

> Is it worthwhile?

Perhaps more compelling-- connect with senior executives in roles & companies that you can help. Imagine connecting with CTO/CIO's, VP's of Engineering in your space.

Yes, I don't care to talk to them at this time, but my situation could change at any time and I may want access to their contact information

I don't use LinkedIn.